Personality Processes Part One Flashcards Preview

What is the Personality processes?

the mechanisms that unfold over time to produce the effects of personality traits; a sequence of steps through which a personality trait produces an outcome

2

What do the personality processes include

Includes perception, thought, motivation, and emotionUnderstanding these will help us understand someone’s personality

3

What is personality (Noun, Verb or Adjective)

VERB!!!!

4

The Historical Roots of Research Into Personality Processes : LEARNING

but ignoring cognition is too limited

5

Social Learning

focused on cognitive processes such as interpretation, evaluation, and decision making

6

Phenomenology:

emphasizes importance of the way an individual thinks about the world for shaping personality and behavior

7

Psychoanalysis

levels of consciousness and the need for compromise

8

Biological Approach

how representations of the self may be organized in the brain

9

Trait Approach

people have different traits based on different thoughts, feelings, and desires

10

What is an example of how People are predisposed to perceive the world in different ways

Example: dominant people are more sensitive o visual displays on the vertical dimension than on the horizontal dimensions

11

Priming

activation of a concept or idea by repeatedly perceiving it or thinking about it; affects speed at which concepts come to mind; helps to explain differences in perception

12

Chronic Accessibility

the tendency of an idea or concept to come easily to mind

13

Perception is Part of our Personalities...

--May come from evolution, temperament, or experience; Experience: probably the biggest influence; based on importance of traits to others whom one is around frequently (e.g., parents)--Different people have a predisposition to be primed for certain concepts

14

Rejection Sensitivity:

People are especially aware of suggestions of impending rejection.----Affects interpretation of ambiguous signals----Often creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: because high rejection sensitive people respond to ambiguous cues with anxiety and even panic-----Can result in seemingly inconsistent behavior: depending on whether or not cues to rejection are present

15

Aggression

related to the tendency to perceive others as having hostile intentions or as a threat; memory may be related to hostile themes for hostile people (but this automatic perception could be overcome if someone slows down and thinks before responding)

16

Perceptual Defense

screening out information that might make the individual anxious or uncomfortable--Similar to psychoanalytic defense mechanisms

17

What are physiological reactions and what do they do?

People can have physiological reactions to emotionally charged words before they are consciously aware of them: when presented very briefly, people started sweating before they said they could see the words

18

Implication

We might be able to avoid conscious awareness of things we find threatening.

19

Why do some people tend to see exactly what they fear most? (shy and social rejection)

Possible answers: their defense mechanisms don’t work well enough so they perceive the threatening stimuli consciously; people differ in the degree to which they are perceptually vigilant vs. defensive

20

What is Thought

Determines many, but not all, actionsNot all thinking is consciousConsciousness: whatever the individual has in mind at the momentShort-term memory (STM)Limited capacity: 7 ± 2 chunks

21

What is STM and thinking

Chunking can work with ideasFunder’s Fifth Law: the purpose of education is to assemble new chunksSTM is the only part of the mind with a limited capacity

22

What are constructs and chunks?

similar ideas, and are both based on experience and culture.A person’s unique set of constructs or chunks influences how they think about the world

23

Consciousness and psychological health:

don’t fill up consciousness with the wrong things (negative thoughts about worries); instead, use consciousness to appreciate the good things in life and for constructive planning

24

Constructs, chunks, and consciousness:

The critical aspects of thinking are the constructs, or chunks, that make up your distinctive view of the world

25

Thought: Unconscious Thoughts

People can do things without knowing why, know things without knowing that they know, and have thoughts and feelings they do not understand. People show a preference for objects they have only seen at an unconscious level (they were presented too quickly for people to be consciously aware of them)The unconscious is important.We can do many things without thinking. We can do many things without needing to, or being able to, think about them (digestion, pupil dilation or contraction)Consciousness is very small and life is more complicated than that: so much more must go on mentally than consciousness can contain

26

Thought: Two ways of thinking

Two systems that can work at the same time

27

Dual-process models

contrast the roles of conscious and unconscious thoughtConscious thought is slowerFreud’s theory: rational and irrational thoughtReflective (slow and largely rational) and impulsive (fast, almost automatic, and sometimes irrational)

28

Cognitive-experiential self-theory

People use two major psychological systems to adapt to the world.Seeks to explain unconscious processing and the seemingly irrational, emotion-driven sectors of the mindThe rational system and the experiential systemDifferent systems may generate different decisions.The systems interact. The experiential system is needed for good judgments to be made.

29

Evolution

recognition of gender, fear of snakes

30

Temperment

tendency to experience positive vs. negative

31

Rejection Sensitivity:

Often creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: Can result in seemingly inconsistent behavior: Aggression:

32

Consciousness

whatever the individual has in mind at the moment

33

Short Term Memory

Where consciousness is located

34

Chunks

pieces of information that can be thought of as a unit; what a chunk is can vary with learning and experience

35

CEST

The rational system and the experiential system

36

Motivation

What do you want? How will you try to get it?

37

Goals

the ends that one desires ---drive behavior by influencing what you attend to, think about and do

38

Strategies

the means used to achieve goals

39

Explicit goals

ones people can talk about and willingly describe

40

Implicit Goals

goals people are likely to not realize that they have

41

Explicit goals vs implicit goals

---Making progress toward implicit goals is related to happiness.--Implicit goals may explain behavior that is not consistent with stated, explicit goals (not looking for a job or an apartment when one says she really would like to be able to move out of her parent’s house)

42

Motivation: Goals

Short-term and long-term goals

43

Short-term goals

are needed to achieve long-term goals; being aware of connections between them gives life meaning and purpose; it’s good to be able to shift one’s focus between these types of goals.

44

Long-Term Goals

goals can help a person make better decisions and organize short-term goals.

45

Idiographic goals

goals that are unique to the individuals who pursue them

46

Properties of Idiographic goals

---Conscious at least some of the time---Describe thoughts and behaviors that are aimed at fairly specific outcomes---Can change over time---Goals function independently of each other

47

Limitation of idiographic goals

Goals are not theoretically organized

48

Goals function independently of each other

the goals don’t necessarily affect each other; people can have goals that are inconsistent with each other

49

Nomothetic goals:

essential motivations that almost everyone pursues; researchers hope looking at goals this way will bring order to idiographic goals